ANT 390H1F Special Topics in Anthropology: *Cancelled*
Practicing Anthropology: Using Anthropology outside of Academia - Instructor TBA
Course description to be posted when available.
ANT 480H1S Special Topics in Anthropological Research: *Cancelled*
User Experience and Design Research: Anthropological Approaches - Instructor TBA
Course description to be posted when available.
ANT 486H1F Special Topics: Socio-Cultural Research Seminar:
Social Studies of Autism - Prof Krista Maxwell
Autism elicits a diverse spectrum of responses: increasingly celebrated by autists and allies as a core identity, the basis for distinct emergent cultures and communities, autism continues to be pathologized and feared in public and clinical discourses, in which it is commonly characterized as a disease to be cured. This course focuses on the interface between anthropology and critical autism studies, an emergent field in which social science and humanities scholars (some themselves autistic) examine autism as both lived experience, and rubric for a complex set of social and cultural phenomena. Engaging with academic and popular texts and multi-media sources, we will explore how knowledge of autism is socially produced in given historical, political and cultural contexts; autobiographical and ethnographic works challenging dominant ideas about autism; histories of autistic people’s self-organising and advocacy, including tensions between adult autists and parents of autistic children; autism and intersectionality, with particular attention to race and gender; and how autism studies both converges with and challenges disability studies. Autistic and other neurodivergent students are welcome in this course, which is open to all.